Why it won’t be easy for Mujuru to beat Mugabe

This is the new party’s Achilles’ heel. It must satisfy the court of public opinion that its ex-ZANU-PF members have reformed, that it will challenge ZANU-PF’s hegemony and that it will behave differently. It also needs to gain the confidence of international donors and investors to offset Zimbabwe’s economic crises.

Mujuru’s party also faces a systemic problem: the challenge of entrenching multi-party democracy in a political culture tainted by decades of heavy-handed rule.

Research suggests that political parties are indispensable for making democracy work and deliver. But a glance at older political parties in Africa suggests that there are challenges to building sustained multi-party democracy on the continent. These include Chama cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania, the Botswana Democratic Party, the Malawi Congress Party, the Uganda People’s Congress, Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement, FRELIMO, in Mozambique, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in South Sudan. These parties include national liberation movements that habitually treat the party as synonymous with government.

Another major challenge facing Africa’s opposition parties is widespread use of the winner-takes-all majoritarian electoral systems. Such systems, despite their advantages of producing predominant winners, primarily undermine minority interests, values and perspectives.

Thus, the key question is whether, and to what extent, Mujuru’s party will strengthen democratic structures and contribute to nation- and state-building. This is particularly pertinent given the perennial fragility of the Zimbabwean state.

It is unclear how much support Mujuru will garner before the 2018 elections. And it would probably be unreasonable to expect an outright win for her party.

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